BUSINESS AND TECH NEWS

BUSINESS AND TECH NEWS

Dalata enjoys big revenue leap

The exterior of the Clayton Hotel, with the Convention Centre Dublin in the background | Image: Savills

9:14 6 Sep 2016
Craig Fitzpatrick
09:14 Tuesday 6 September 2016

Dalata, the publicly-quoted hotels group that owns or operates close to 7,000 hotel rooms around the country, has just posted strong revenue and profit figures for the first half of the year.

In the six months to June, revenues increased by one-third to €130m, while pre-tax profits enjoyed a near seven-fold increase to €18.2m.

The Group invested up to €70m during the six-month period, acquiring the freehold and leasehold interests of seven hotels and acquiring sites to build hotels in Dublin, Cork and Belfast.

Dalata Chief Executive, Pat McCann told Breakfast Business that work would soon get underway on these new developments:

"We have announced, obviously, a very strong pipeline of development where we will be building in Ireland just over 900 rooms.

"And the significance of that is that we will be creating approximately 400 jobs during construction phase, but also more importantly 400 more permanent jobs in the country following on from that."

Despite all of this, there is uncertainty over what impact Brexit will have on the UK hotel market, with the group adding that it was "disappointed" with the result of the UK referendum and that the weakening sterling continues to negatively impact the euro translated earning from its UK hotels.